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Today's special: the sugar coma
I have a fundraising dinner to go to. The calendar is marked, the baby sitter is booked, the tickets are reserved, and I have a nice dress waiting in my closet. There is only one problem: the dress doesn’t fit, because I can’t close the zipper. In fact, I can’t even find the zipper, the zipper lives in a different postal code, the zipper taunts me. Right now, the zipper and I are enemies.
There is no other option than to go on a diet. Do you remember how easy that was back in college? First of all, there was no money to buy food anyway, and nobody complained if the fridge sat empty for a few weeks. There were plenty of excuses not to cook a three-course meal every night, and as for the snack cabinet, the closest we came to that was half a bottle of Kahlua and some nasty old crackers.
No temptations, and no guilt; nobody to distract you from your purpose because most of your friends shared your unhealthy life style. Food, who needs it?
Nowadays I have children, and apparently they can’t go for five minutes without being fed. “I’m hungry,” my daughter announces at least ten times a day. My son enthusiastically joins her, but never actually finishes anything. Not only am I forced to constantly provide food; I have to look at it. There it sits, uneaten, cooling off, looking oh-so attractive, and my own mother passed on just enough guilt that I can’t bring myself to throw it away. Those barbecue chips my son asked for last night, and then changed his mind about? Yeah, I ate them. All of them. Even the crumbs. After a whole week of trying not to eat unhealthy things and using the treadmill religiously, I have lost one pound. This is not going well.
Luckily, they routinely eat many things I don’t like. I’ll starve myself before I’ll take one bite of macaroni and cheese; it tastes nasty and should never have been invented. The smell of their breakfast cereal either gives me a headache (fruity pebbles) or reminds me of feet (cheerios). If that isn’t finished, it goes straight down the garbage disposal, no guilty feelings there. Half eaten peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches are given to the birds, who are not on a diet and actually seem to enjoy the stuff. The same goes for popcorn. I can live without it just as easily as I can live without a hole in my head.
Things get trickier around dinnertime; my daughter has taken an interest in cooking and tends to suggest really great things, things I want to make, things I love eating. Alfredo pasta with roasted salmon. Dutch pancakes, made from scratch, with butter, sugar and cinnamon. (FYI, in Holland, we eat pancakes for dinner, not breakfast)
Frittata’s with all the trimmings. And that delectable fish stew recipe from my mother, with potatoes (no! Bad potatoes!), mustard, and rivers of butter. In addition to that, she makes things hard by complaining: “there is no chocolate in the house”. She wants to know why. “I feel like eating some nice dark chocolate,” she says. Yeah, you and me both.
I ask her what she wants to eat tonight, bracing myself for the inevitable onslaught of vicious carbohydrates, when she surprises me by asking for salad. I readily agree, before she can change her mind. Whatever fluke in her thinking is responsible for this, I’m rolling with it. At least, this night I don’t have to prepare, look at, smell, and deny what I really want. I am not willing to give up; if you see me at the dinner wearing a dress (probably not) congratulate me; if, on the other hand, I’m wearing pants, don’t ask. Agreed? Good.
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